Whether you’re doing your daily shop or heading for a night out, your Android phone is all you need as you walk out the door — thanks to Android Pay. Starting today, Android Pay is available in Poland, helping you pay for everything simply and securely with your Android phone.

You will be able to use Android Pay at more than 400 thousand retail locations throughout Poland that accept contactless payments. This includes your favourite shops like Carrefour and Rossmann, cafes like Costa Coffee and much more – take a look here for more places where you can use Android Pay.

How does Android Pay work?

Using Android Pay is simple. Just wake up your phone (you don’t even have to open an app or unlock it), hold it to the payment terminal, and voilà — your payment is done. After you check out, you’ll get helpful information on your phone about your recent transactions.

Android Pay will also let you breeze through checkout when you shop in your favorite mobile apps. There’s no need to enter your payment or address details every time. Look for the Android Pay purchase button when the feature launches soon in apps like Allegro, Ceneo, Fancy, iTaxi.pl and Uber, with many more to come.

To get started, download Android Pay from the Play Store and add an eligible Mastercard or Visa card (credit or debit) from Alior Bank, Bank Zachodni WBK or T-Mobile Banking Services. mBank will be supported soon, along with more banks in the coming months. Android Pay is available on all Android devices that are NFC-enabled and running on KitKat 4.4 or higher.

Because Android Pay doesn’t share your actual credit or debit card number with stores when you pay, it’s even safer than using a plastic card. If your phone is ever lost or stolen, you can simply use Android Device Manager to instantly lock your device from anywhere, secure it with a new password, or wipe it clean of your personal information.

We’ve teamed up with many leading payment platforms, processors, and technology providers such as Braintree and First Data to make it even easier to accept Android Pay in stores and apps. Visit the Android Pay API developer site to learn more.

Get started with Android Pay in Poland today: download the app on Google Play, add your card and start shopping. It’s as easy as Tap. Pay. Done.

Since 2013, Google Play Newsstand has provided a single destination on your phone or tablet for browsing thousands of the world’s leading news sources and magazines. More than 100 million users trust Newsstand every month to follow the stories, topics, and interests they care about.

Today, we are announcing a complete redesign of Newsstand that focuses on three big improvements: personalization, rich media, and the extension of our platform to the web.

A fully personalized news and magazine reader for you

We are applying the power of Google machine learning to Newsstand’s rich catalog in order to find and recommend the most timely, relevant stories for you based on your individual interests.

When you open the app, a personalized briefing shows you a blend of the top stories you need to know, including major headlines, local news, and personal interests. It’s perfect to start your morning, or to get caught up in under one minute during the day.

Below the briefing, Newsstand also recommends a stream of stories from your favorite topics and sources, allowing you to go deeper into the day’s news or to simply feed your curiosity. Each recommendation includes a justification and an option for providing feedback. This way you always know why we’re showing you a story, and you can easily tell Newsstand whether to continue showing you similar stories. In other words, it gets better the more you use it.

Rich images and videos make the feeds come to life

We have improved our support for multimedia content building on the AMP support we launched earlier this year. Scroll through your feed, and you will see autoplay videos, easy podcast controls, and high-resolution, full-bleed images. Every story and topic in Newsstand now comes to life in a more engaging, beautiful presentation. And our Data Saver mode allows you to enjoy it in a way that is aware of data and bandwidth preferences.

Available anywhere you want it, including the web

Finally, we know how important it is to provide access to the news and stories you care about, wherever you are. And that’s why we have not only included Android and iOS in this update, but have extended Newsstand 4.0 to the web with our brand new web app. No matter which platform or device you use, all of your personalization and favorite sources are just a tap or click away.

Altogether, we believe that these changes contribute to a much more engaging and delightful experience for staying on top of the news.

“Newsstand just got better and CNN is happy to be a part of it. Video is more visible and integral, aligning with CNN’s expertise and enabling us to reach audiences around the world in a more visual AND more personal way.”

— Meredith Artley, SVP & Editor In Chief, CNN Digital

“The Telegraph is committed to ensuring that our readers are able to access the content they want, on the platforms they prefer. As part of this, we have been working to grow the Telegraph’s presence on Google Newsstand. Over the last year, this has seen a trebling of our traffic on the platform. As Newsstand continues to evolve, it offers ever better user experiences and more monetisation opportunities for publishers. We welcome the launch of the latest version of Newsstand and look forward to being part of its ongoing success.”

— Melinda Rogers, Lead Product Manager, The Telegraph

We will be rolling out these changes on Android, iOS and the web over the next couple of days.

We recently launched new tools in G Suite like Explore, Action items, and other features to help your teams save time and focus on what’s important: creating impactful work, quicker. We know time spent re-creating files in the workplace takes away from the time your team can spend collaborating and achieving results.

With this new feature, your team can simply submit files to shared template galleries in the Docs, Sheets, Slides and Forms home screens for your co-workers to adapt and use as needed. With these customizable templates, your teams can focus less on formatting and more on driving impact and sharing success.

G Suite for Business and Education customers can require templates be approved before they appear in the gallery or restrict who can submit new templates. Admins can learn more about enabling and using custom templates on the G Suite Apps Updates Blog.

The world has so many beautiful and amazing places to visit. If we’re lucky, we’re able to travel and see a few of them. But even the most active travelers can only see a fraction. What if we could see them all?

Ten years ago, Google Earth began as an effort to help people everywhere explore our planet. And now, with more than two billion downloads, many have. Today, we are introducing Google Earth VR as our next step to help the world see the world. With Earth VR, you can fly over a city, stand at the top of the highest peaks, and even soar into space.

Now, at 196.9 million square miles, we know the world is pretty big, so we’ve made it easy to find great places to visit. Earth VR comes with cinematic tours and hand-picked destinations that send you to the Amazon River, the Manhattan skyline, the Grand Canyon, the Swiss Alps, and more.

Flying in Earth VR

You can download Google Earth VR today in the Steam Store for free. Like Tilt Brush, Earth VR is launching first on the HTC Vive. Stay tuned for more updates on Google Earth across other platforms next year.

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, gave a talk at our new campus in King’s Cross, London, where he spoke about the UK’s digital heritage, our investment in the country, and ensuring everyone is part of the digital economy:

Building a new London campus:

“It’s great to be in the UK, a place where innovators have changed people’s lives on a mass scale—from cracking the Enigma code, to inventing the world wide web. The UK is also home to institutions that improve the lives of people from every walk of life. Think about the BBC or the NHS—even the Premier League. The inclusiveness of these institutions may at times be taken for granted in the UK, but they greatly impress those of us looking in.

In the UK, it’s clear to me that computer science has a great future with the talent, educational institutions and passion for innovation. That’s why we’re investing in London in both engineering talent and infrastructure. 2,000 people—mostly engineers—moved into our current building in October, and we’re excited to continue our investment in King’s Cross with a brand new building right across the street. We plan to start construction in 2018, and when complete we’ll have more than a million square feet of space across three offices in the King’s Cross campus—enough for more than 7,000 employees.”

Announcing 5 hours digital skills training for everyone:

“We understand there’s uncertainty around topics like Brexit and the pace of technological change in our times. But we know for certain that the web and digital technology will be an engine of growth for years to come. As in most countries, many people in the UK lack the digital skills to feel a part of this fast growing economy. They need to learn skills like building a web presence, driving online growth and reaching customers over mobile and video. And to provide that support, we’ve been investing in digital skills training programs across Britain, and already visited more than 80 towns and trained 250k people.

And I’m pleased to announce our pledge to provide five hours of digital skills training to every person and every small business in Britain. Starting in 2017, no matter where you’re based, you’ll be able to get free training from our online academy. And for those who prefer to do these things face to face, we’ll bring our experts to more than 100 cities and towns so you can get the advice that matters to you.”

Announcing Expeditions for a million school children:

“Beyond reaching people currently in the workforce, we also see an opportunity to reach students earlier in the educational process—where technology can help acclimate the next generation to new tools and enrich the educational experience itself.

Take Expeditions, our collection of virtual reality content that can be used alongside existing curriculum to deepen learning. Think of these as virtual field trips, where no school bus alone could transport students. From the Great Barrier Reef to a firsthand encounter with dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum. It’s an amazing experience that electrifies the learning process. We’re also bringing Expeditions at no charge to a million British children by the end of 2017. We hope this not only brings science and the natural world to life, but inspires children to think about an emerging field like Virtual Reality.”

The UK is a tech leader:

“We believe the ingenuity and enterprise of the UK will ensure it remains a leading hub for discovery and opportunity. Taking a step back—just like Google in its early days, I know somewhere in the UK a couple of kids are tinkering with software and gears in a garage. While unknown to all of us, chances are, they may actually be inventing the future. By bringing the information, tools, and skills to serve them, our hope is that their ideas aren’t left to chance alone, but can someday take off—and make as positive a contribution to the world as UK inventors have consistently proven is possible.”

Indonesian developer Inovidea Magna Global might not be a household name, but their photo sharing and editing app PicMix is nothing short of a global social phenomenon. When the team got their start in Jakarta in 2012, they had no idea that their problem-solving idea would one day grow into an app that had 27 million users worldwide. As part of our series of interviews with people across Asia-Pacific who use the Internet to create, connect, and grow, we spoke to their CEO, Calvin Kizana, and co-founder Sandy Colondam, to find out all about the secret sauce behind the team that makes those little stickers people just can’t get enough of.

How would you describe the PicMix app in just one sentence?PicMix is a photo and video editing and sharing app, that’s evolved into a global sharing community powered both by content and commerce.

Why did you choose to become developers?We really wanted to do something that had the potential to bring joy to people. Compared to some more traditional career paths, building cool mobile apps can enrich people’s lives through delight. We wanted to find a mix of passion, tech and impact in our careers — this made becoming a developer an obvious choice.

What inspired you to create PicMix? Back when we started our company in 2012, we were spending a lot of time editing, sharing and creating photo collages. We wanted to save time and create a one-stop-shop for all of this. That’s how the idea for PicMix was born. We set out to answer the question: what if we could create a single app that could do all of this and still be easy enough for everyone to use?

What lessons have you learned along the way?Never. Stop. Innovating. One of the greatest things about being a developer is that things are always changing. We have to keep up with new trends pretty much on a daily basis. If PicMix had remained a simple photo editing tool, it would have died an early death. By keeping up with how people were spending their time online, we we knew that PicMix needed to become social. Being flexible about your product, taking on user feedback and analyzing trends are the key factors to stay afloat in a competitive market.

What has been your biggest challenge?The global app market is a pretty competitive place, and back when we got our start, Indonesian developers lacked access to a lot of the resources and education available in some other countries. We solved this problem by using the Google Play Developer tools. This ensured that our apps are the highest quality and have the potential to go global.

For example, we needed an intuitive and appealing interface that people around the world would not only know how to use, but enjoy spending time in. We decided to apply the Material Design guidelines which are the same principles that the Android OS is built on. Material Design is a visual language that merges principles of good design with technology. After implementing these guidelines, the time our users spent in Picmix jumped from 2 minutes to 8 minutes. The number of likes and comments we got also skyrocketed.

What is your advice for anyone who wants to get started as a developer?Keep challenging yourself, explore the best in you and don’t be afraid of failing Success is 99% failure.

Earlier today in a year 5 classroom in London, Sundar (our CEO) led 23 students on a field trip to the International Space Station, giving them the chance to learn about astronauts and space scientists.

Google Expeditions enables teachers to bring their students on virtual trips to places like museums, heritage sites, underwater, or even outer space — immersing students in experiences that bring abstract concepts to life and giving them a deeper understanding of the world beyond the classroom. Through partnerships with education companies such as TES and Twig, we’ve created more than 300 Expeditions and over 100 new lessons, which can be used alongside existing curriculum.

In addition to the 1 million students who have already taken an Expedition with Google Cardboard since we first introduced the Pioneer Programme, today we’re announcing our aim to reach another one million students in thousands of UK classrooms by the end of this school year.

Google Expeditions for the UK: Take your students around the world in VR

We’ve already received feedback from thousands of teachers in the UK who believe that Expeditions can help improve literacy and writing skills, and create excitement that complements and enhances traditional teaching methods.

The Google Expeditions team will be hitting the road to visit thousands of schools across Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Newcastle and Inverness in the next few months. The programme is free for any school in the UK and teachers are encouraged to sign up here.

Virtual reality can spark students’ imagination and help them learn about topics in an engaging and immersive way.

Neural Machine Translation has been generating exciting research results for a few years and in September, our researchers announced Google’s version of this technique. At a high level, the Neural system translates whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar. Since it’s easier to understand each sentence, translated paragraphs and articles are a lot smoother and easier to read. And this is all possible because of end-to-end learning system built on Neural Machine Translation, which basically means that the system learns over time to create better, more natural translations.

Today we’re putting Neural Machine Translation into action with a total of eight languages to and from English and French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Turkish. These represent the native languages of around one-third of the world’s population, covering more than 35% of all Google Translate queries!

With this update, Google Translate is improving more in a single leap than we’ve seen in the last ten years combined. But this is just the beginning. While we’re starting with eight language pairs within Google Search the Google Translate app, and website; our goal is to eventually roll Neural Machine Translation out to all 103 languages and surfaces where you can access Google Translate.

And there’s more coming today too — Google Cloud Platform, our public cloud service, offers Machine Learning APIs that make it easy for anyone to use our machine learning technology. Today, Google Cloud Platform is also making the system behind Neural Machine Translation available for all businesses through Google Cloud Translation API. You can learn more about it here.

Today’s step towards Neural Machine Translation is a significant milestone for Google Translate, but there’s always more work to do and we’ll continue to learn over time. We’ll also continue to rely on Translate Community, where language loving multilingual speakers can help share their language by contributing and reviewing translations. We can’t wait for you to try to start translating and understanding the world just a little bit better.

This 233,000 year old female figurine is said to be the oldest piece of artwork ever found. Based on microscopic analyses archeologists suggest that it was shaped by human hands — possibly one of the first artists in the world. Critically, those human hands used a flint to shape the head and arms.

Made of volcanic material, this 233,000-year-old and 3.5 cm tall female figure is the oldest artwork discovered.

Ever since its ancient beginnings, art has been influenced by the tools and technology available to create and share works. Breakthroughs in painting, printing, or the invention of photography all provided tools for creative expression, and left their mark on our culture. In turn, art has inspired innovation and pushed the boundaries of technology. This remains true today.

Our team at Google Arts & Culture has been curious what Machine Learning can do in the hands of artists, museums or curators to create new experiences and help unlock art for everyone. This is why we invited creative coders – think of someone who is both a software engineer and an artist – to collaborate and experiment at our Lab in Paris. And today, we’re excited to share what we’ve been up to: check out the Google Arts & Culture Experiments, a new online space where you can see and play with the experimental projects that we have built.

With these experiments, you can explore hundreds of thousands of artworks and let Machine Learning aid your discovery.

X Degrees of separation: They say any two people in the world can be connected through just a few layers of friends of friends. Much like Kevin Bacon is connected to anyone in Hollywood. How about artworks? Created in collaboration with code artist Mario Klingemann, our ‘X Degrees of Separation’ lets you choose any two artworks and the computer using Machine Learning will find a visual pathway connecting them through a chain of similar artworks.

t-SNE Map: we’re all familiar with landscapes paintings, but how about a landscape of the history of art itself? You can now travel through hundreds of thousands of artworks from across centuries organized into one vast 3D landscape in this experiment. The more similar two works are seen by the computer the closer they are on the map. This was built in collaboration with digital interaction artist, Cyril Diagne.

Tags: A picture is worth a thousand words. In our Tags experiment the computer looked at the artworks and tagged them with all it saw in the picture. In turn this allows you to explore anything from “hairstyles” to more abstract concepts like “calm” or “happy” in works from across the world of art.

‘X Degrees of Separation’ lets you choose any two artworks and the Machine Learning algorithm will find a visual pathway connecting them through a chain of similar artworks.

We’re delighted to see the amount of excitement around Machine Learning in the cultural sector, especially among creative coders. If you are a creative coder yourself, or just getting started, check out the new AI Experiments website created by our friends in the Creative Lab where you can find further inspiration and resources.

Whether we’re binge watching in the bedroom, gaming in the basement, or taking a video call from the kitchen, we want fast Wi-Fi in every room of our homes. And yet we still put up with Wi-Fi headaches, like spotty connections, dead zones, and blinking lights when something goes wrong.

As we continue to bring the latest and greatest gadgets into our homes, we want to make sure they get the connectivity they need. That’s why we built Google Wifi, to give you fast Wi-Fi in every room, on every device. We’re able to eliminate spotty connections, dead zones and blinking lights using our new mesh Wi-Fi system.

But what is mesh, exactly? We’re glad you asked…

A mesh network is a group of routers that communicate wirelessly to each other to create a single Wi-Fi network that provides a blanket of connectivity. This allows you to have multiple sources of powerful Wi-Fi throughout your home, instead of just a single router.

Think about where the router is located in your home. Probably in a corner, close to where the internet service enters your home. The problem is, that far flung corner is the worst location to place a router if you want fast Wi-Fi throughout the house. The farther you are from the router, the weaker the signal, which leads to dreaded dead zones and buffered videos.

Google Wifi addresses the problem by allowing you to wirelessly expand your network through mesh. For the networking experts – that’s IEEE 802.11s mesh, that’s further improved by a few of Google’s own innovations.

Since Wi-Fi is broadcasted from each Wifi point (and not just a single router), Google Wifi is a connected system that provides better coverage over a wider space. The system is flexible and scalable, so if you have a larger home, connect as many points as needed to get better Wi-Fi in every room (our 3-pack covers up to 4,500 sq. ft). Wifi points connect wirelessly, so you don’t need to run Ethernet cables throughout your house.

Since all the Wifi points are connected to each other, data can take several paths toward its destination — and we use our Network Assist technology to ensure that Google Wifi points always choose the fastest route from your device to the internet. This means that you get faster Wi-Fi speeds for things like streaming and gaming.

Want to make a ‘mesh’ of your house? Google Wifi is available for pre-order in the US beginning today at retailers like the Google Store. A single Wifi point retails for $129, and covers homes up to 1,500 square feet. The three-pack, at $299, covers homes up to 4,500 square feet. Google Wifi ships on December 6th, just in time for fast Wi-Fi for all of your holiday guests.